Why the Apocalypse Feels Calmer

I love apocalyptic and survival video games.

Not casually. I genuinely love them.

One of my favorites is Green Hell. You start with nothing. No house. No stocked kitchen. No safety net. You have to forage for sticks, figure out how to start a fire, build shelter from whatever you can find.

When I play it in VR, I get so into it that I forget I’m standing in my living room. I’ll crouch down to build a fire and when it finally lights, I just sit there for the longest time. The jungle sounds all around me. The crackling fire. The small circle of light pushing back the dark.

And it feels calm.

Not chaotic. Not scary.

Calm.

There’s something about crafting my own shelter and knowing I can take care of myself in that world that feels grounding. It’s simple. Clear. Contained.

It probably has something to do with connecting me back to camping when I was younger.

I grew up camping. Real fires. Real quiet. Real dark nights where the only light came from the fire — and the stars.

I remember lying back and looking up at a sky that actually felt dark. No streetlights. No glow from a city. Just stars everywhere. The kind of dark that makes you feel small in a good way.

No buzzing refrigerator.
No background notifications.
No invisible world humming around you.

Just nature and whoever was physically there.

When I’m sitting at that virtual fire, I feel some version of that again.

Connection with nature.
A calm, relaxing quiet.
A smaller world.

The power went out the other day, and I noticed something.

The house went still in a way that felt familiar. The hum disappeared. The WiFi dropped. The lights went out.

And suddenly the room felt contained — lit only by what I chose to light.

I lit a candle and just sat there.

And I thought, Oh. This feels like camping.

Which made me wonder why losing electricity feels more peaceful than having it.

Why pretending the world has collapsed sometimes feels calmer than living in it fully powered.

When the power is on, everything feels slightly open.

Reachable.
Available.
Active.

There’s always something happening somewhere else.

Even if no one is texting me, they could.
Even if nothing urgent is happening, it might.
Even if I don’t check, it’s still there.

It’s like the world has infinite tabs open.

And I feel subtly on duty.

Not in a dramatic way. Just in the background.

Like I’m supposed to be aware. Responsive. Looping back in.

But when the power goes out, all of that disappears at once.

There’s no “elsewhere.”
No updates.
No invisible conversations unfolding.

Just the room.
The candle.
The dark outside the window.

It reminds me of looking up at the stars while camping — realizing how quiet the world actually is when we let it be.

Maybe that’s why survival games feel calming.

The world shrinks.

Your job is clear.
Your space is defined.
Your fire is either lit or it isn’t.

There’s nothing to monitor beyond what’s physically around you.

And something in me relaxes when life gets that small.

I know I could turn my phone off anytime. I could light candles anytime. I could choose quiet.

Nothing bad would happen.

That’s the interesting part.

Nothing would happen except me enjoying myself.

And yet I rarely choose it unless the power chooses it for me.

I don’t fully understand that yet.

But when the world goes dark, I’m finally allowed to.

Allowed to not know.
Allowed to not respond.
Allowed to not keep tabs on the invisible hum of everything.

Just sit by the fire — even if it’s virtual, even if it’s a candle in my living room — and let the world be small for a while.